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The Space Between is the podcast where strength and vulnerability meet for families navigating life with cancer.
Hosted by Amri Kibbler, a cancer survivor and parent, each episode offers honest stories, expert insights, and heartfelt support for those balancing treatment, caregiving, and parenting - often all at once.
If you're walking this path, you’re not alone. This is your space to feel seen, find connection, and heal.
Amri Kibbler (00:00):
At the time, I knew it was going to be temporary, so I was like, I just don't want to create more stress for my kids. I want to save them from those feelings. But honestly, if I could go back and do it over again, it became really difficult for me because I was hiding this thing. Hi, I am Amri and this is The Space Between. I'm a cancer survivor and a mom, and while those roles don't define me, they have shaped who I am. I created this space to share honest stories, expert insights, and meaningful support for families navigating life with cancer. If you're balancing treatment, caregiving, parenting, or just trying to hold it all together, you are not alone. This is your space to connect, to heal, and to feel seen. And I'm so glad that you're here.
(00:55):
Welcome to the Space Between, I'm Amri Kibbler. I'm a mom of two, an entrepreneur, community builder, cancer thriver, and I'm someone who has spent years creating spaces where women can feel seen, connected, and supported as the founder of Hey Mama. This show has been born from my own personal journey through life's inbetweens, the InBetween of Facing Cancer as a mom and business leader, and juggling all of those things. And in today's solo episode, I wanted to share more of my story, the why behind the podcast, some of the lessons that I've picked up along the way from navigating cancer to building communities. I've learned that it's the in-between moments when you're not quite where you were and you're not quite sure where you're going when you really need support. And I hope that my story and some of the insights that I've learned from the incredible guests that we've had on this podcast will make a real difference for you.
(01:58):
So the reason that I created the space between was that I was mom to two girls. My youngest had just turned five when I was diagnosed, and I really struggled. I struggled as a mom, I struggled in kind of every which way during that time. And so I wanted to create a space and conversations that could really help anyone that is starting out on their cancer journey. And I also, I had colorectal cancer and I didn't really see many people who looked like me, someone who seemed like they were healthy and they were parents that were on a similar journey or that had cancer. So I wanted to start off with my own experience and why I started the space between as a mom of two, I had two girls, my youngest had just turned five when I was diagnosed. And I really struggled in all areas of how to do this thing.
(03:04):
As a parent, I felt like I had really limited energy and there was all kinds of tough conversations that were unfolding in front of me. And so I wanted to create a space that would make it easier for people, for anyone that was going into this cancer journey. And I also have learned that there are many types of cancer that are on the rise for people that are under the age of 50, so younger people. And that alone is creating a space where now there are so many more people that are dealing with a lot of different stressors on top of their cancer. We all know that parenting when you're well has many of its challenges. So layering that on that many people are also working there can also be dealing with the sandwich generation, aging parents. And when you layer all those things on together, it can just feel like so much.
(04:09):
So I have been inviting incredible guests on to share their own experiences as they have gone through cancer. And then also some amazing experts. So we'll talk a little about some of the things that I've learned on my journey too, but I want to say that I'm not creating this because I was an expert in this. Let me tell you, I'm almost the person that made so many mistakes that I would like to save other people from making these mistakes that I made. Looking back, I can see so many choices that I made that I wish that someone had said, oh, hey, here's a list of ways that you should talk to your kids. Here's different things that you can do to engage them, and here's how to deal with some of the guilt that you're going to have and dealing with some of those emotions, dealing with the anger and making some tough choices as a parent too.
(05:05):
So that's why we're here for me. Hopefully I will be honest with you guys and tell you what I did wrong, maybe the way that I can be most helpful. So let's talk about how I told my own kids about my diagnosis. So as I said, my kids were five and nine. When I was first diagnosed, it was the heart of the pandemic. You couldn't really fly anywhere. And it was right before Christmas we were heading down to Florida to visit my parents who lived down in Florida. We were driving down there. So we got the test results back from my colonoscopy and they were sending them off to conclusively, find out if it was cancer, and then they were going to have to do phasing. So I was waiting to get the phone call. We driven down to Florida, and because my kids were at different ages and different stages, I thought of comprehension.
(06:06):
I decided that I was going to tell them separately. So I was down at the beach and I had each of them kind of come out and I talked to them about what was going on. I used the word cancer, which I've learned is it's great to tell your kids clearly that you have cancer so they can understand that word. But I think it would've been, and I've learned now from talking to several experts, that if you tell your kids together with your whole family there and present, it can create more of a sense of community and connection and let them ask their questions together and lean on each other. I think that the beach was a great option because we love being there together, and it was just natural that we were going to be at the beach because we were there on vacation too.
(06:57):
And as the conversations have gone along with my kids, I have learned how transparency and being honest with your kids as much as possible is so helpful. And again, I'm going to tell you that we didn't always do this in my family, and it's been how many years now? Five years since I was first diagnosed. My kids have grown quite a bit and now I really try to be very transparent and had had conversations and kind of filled my kids in on things. But there were quite a few things that happened that my husband and I decided not to tell my kids at the time, and it definitely created a lot more stress for us. I had a recurrence of my cancer occurrence, of my colorectal cancer in 2022, and I had an ostomy between the two surgeries for four and a half months. And I mean, at the time I knew it was going to be temporary, so I was like, I just don't want to create more stress for my kids.
(08:04):
I want to save them from those feelings. But honestly, it's another one if I could go back and do it over again. It became really difficult for me because I was hiding this thing. I had to go in the bathroom and change it, and I had lots of different supplies for it, and it stuck out a little bit underneath my shirt or my pants. So it became an ongoing thing that I felt like was weighing on me, that I was hiding it from them as we were going through our daily lives. Sometimes they would go to give me a squeeze and I would feel myself pull back a little bit because I didn't want them to feel the ostomy because I felt embarrassed about it and awkward and I didn't want them to be afraid and all of these things. And now two and a half years later, I wish that I had just shown them or told them what was going on right away.
(09:07):
So that is my advice for anyone. If you're going through that and what's going to be coming up as far as your cancer treatment and the stages that you're in, letting them know that when you've had chemo or your certain treatments during that period, you're going to be feeling more tired and the activities that you can do together are going to be more of your lower energy inside. Things like, okay, these are great times for us to read books together and have a stack of books set aside that they can look forward to that these are the books that you're going to be able to read and you can plan on some upcoming movies that you're excited to see or shows that you kind of save for during that time period. So planning some things that they look forward to. My daughter made these cute little dice that she wrote things to do on, and the idea is that when you can't think of anything to do, you take the little jar and you roll the dice and then whatever it lands on is what you could do together.
(10:09):
So it could be cuddles or drawing or any of those things and having the expectation set up that okay for a few days after the treatment, mommy, when I'm not feeling that well, these are the kind of activities that we have, and then when I have a little bit more energy in a week following, let's plan something to look forward to so that you both have those expectations and you both have something to look forward to. I found that having things to look forward to, not even just for my kids, I sort of lived on things to look forward to. Having something in my calendar, even a month away or post-treatment that we were going to get to do that I knew was going to be really fun. It was so helpful for me to stay motivated and to stay feeling positive, and I know that that was really helpful for my kids too, having those things for us to look forward to.
(11:11):
I teamed up with Stacey Eagle and Elise Ryan to create sea waves of support. Healing selenite bracelet sets you keep one and gift the other to someone facing cancer or life's challenges, a powerful reminder, they're not alone. Learn more at sea waves of support.com. Looking back, one of the things that I remember at the time thinking that, oh, I'm going to be so sad that this happened. It was my older daughter's birthday and we were having her birthday party at our house. Her birthday is in the summer, and we had a big group of kids that were coming over. We had rented a giant water slide that was outside, and I always, as a mom, loved to decorate and make the party really special. So it was in the middle of my chemo treatment. I had gotten up and started preparing things and decorating, and just as all of the guests started getting there, I started feeling just really terrible.
(12:09):
I really tried to stick it out and stay, but I felt dizzy and nauseous and the kids had just started getting there and there were parents that were staying and I had to excuse myself and go and lay down, and I really missed almost the entire party. I was in bed, I had a blanket over me and my husband kept coming in to check on me, and I got up and went outside for a few minutes. When the cake was coming out, we sang Happy Birthday, and then I went back to bed and I was like, oh man, I just know that I have ruined her party. And I felt so guilty and I felt so, so bad about myself really, because I felt like I had let her down. And I asked her about this later and she said, mom, I had such a great birthday.
(13:07):
It was an amazing party. All my friends were there, everything was great. She barely even remembered that I had to excuse myself for a big chunk of the party. And looking back on it, that's not one of the things she remembers. She remembers that I was there for a little while. She remembers me being there and we blew out the candles and she remembers that she had an amazing time with her friends and her dad was there. I had put all of this guilt and bad feelings on myself that weren't there. So I think it's important to know that your kids aren't going to remember things the way that you remember things. Another thing that looking back on it really was important to me to show up for my kids things and to be there. And it was important for me, for myself to feel like I was a part of what was happening for them.
(13:58):
But there was definitely a couple of times that I pushed myself too far where I should have really listened to my body a little bit better and stayed home. I remember there was a school presentation. It might've been my daughter's second grade orientation. I'm really not sure. I just remember knowing that I really wasn't feeling great, and it was during a time when I was really nauseous and I was on some pain medication that was making me really nauseous. And so I was sitting in the six row of the hot auditorium and all of a sudden I was like, oh my God, I am going to throw up. So I had to jump up and run down the hallway and find a little kid's bathroom, and I was sick and I was just like, okay, from now on, I have to remember that I need to really listen to my body and listen to myself because I want to show up for my kids, but I have to show up for myself first to be able to be there wholly for them.
(15:02):
And then also I found out that my daughter really didn't care if I had gone to the orientation and my husband was going as well. It wasn't one of those big important moments. I had put too much value on it. Something that I've learned through this experience with my kids and my family is how the little moments together really are the most precious. Some of my best moments of doing things with my kids and things that brought me a lot of joy were just small little moments where we shared a little cuddle or a laugh together or a book that we read or something like that. It wasn't all of these giant things that I had in my mind over the years set up that I had to do for my kids. I found that what they really just wanted was my attention, and I was still able to give them that, to give them my attention, to give them my presence and give them my love as I was going through cancer.
(16:02):
And that's all that they really wanted. They wanted their mom to be able to listen to them, did bedtime stories. I did a lot of meditations with my kids. We would listen to meditations on YouTube or different apps, but I also made up some meditations for my kids. They had some trouble sleeping. They would lay down with me quite a bit and I would do meditations for the kids. I would just kind of make things up and talk about floating on fluffy clouds and all kinds of different things, but I would rub their heads and make them feel relaxed. And those are some of my favorite memories that I have during that time of just spending time with them in a quiet way. Something else that I've heard from people that they want to talk about is navigating some of the practicalities of just being alive in treatment.
(17:00):
When I had cancer during the pandemic, most of the services that were offered, those kinds of services were not working. So it was a different situation for me. I wasn't able to access those things, and I am so incredibly happy that they're all back, that they're back on, and that there are so many resources that are available to help to support that with logistical things like getting to your treatment or if you need groceries delivered and there's groups that your kids can go to in person to get help and to find other people to talk to, whereas when I was in treatment, everything was off. So there were no group support, no in-person group supports, no ride shares, no one coming to your house, nobody could come and drop off food, all of those things. But all of those things are so important for recovery and helping you to heal.
(17:59):
So let's talk about things that your support system can do to help, because this is a big question that I get. I have six best girlfriends. We've been friends for 20 some years. We met when we were all single. We worked in fashion together in New York City. We were assistants at Conde Nas together, and we've since gotten married and had kids and moved all over the place. And these are my ride or die girls. And one of the things that I found to be so difficult was telling people, especially people that I cared about that I had cancer because I found it to be really draining and that I had to take on the emotional responsibility of their reaction. And I would break out into a cold sweat and just get my cortisol levels would go up when I would think about having to tell another person.
(18:53):
So I tapped one of my friends, Rachel Castaldi, thank you, Rachel, for being my cancer cheerleader. She was tasked with a job of telling all of our friends. So she broke the news to our closest friends, our six best friends, and then other friends, people that I knew, so they wouldn't have to have that conversation over and over again. And you can reach out to her. She'd love to hear from you and let them know where I was and what was going on with me so that then I could have normal conversations with people and not have to share that story over and over again and not to have someone cry on the other end of the line. And it was so helpful. It was amazing because then people would've already processed what was going on and their feelings were, and then they could call me, and then we could have a conversation where, yes, I could talk about my cancer, but we could also talk about what was going on in their lives or other people's lives around us.
(19:52):
Some of the other things that I think are so great, of course, always if you can take care of a meal, do a meal train, that kind of thing is great. But even voice notes or messages, texts. I just loved funny texts and photos or sending an Instagram story with a tag with a nice little message if you're looking for someone to help you through cancer. I had many great cancer mentors, some of which have been on the show now. Christine Handy has been a dear friend to me. I would suggest that you reach out and try to get connected with someone who can share their experience as someone who's had the same kind of cancer that you've had. If you have colon cancer, which is what I had, there's Colon town on Facebook. Something that we haven't talked about yet is self-care. As a cancer, thriver self-care has become such an important part of my wellness routine, I think, and my healing journey and continuing to be healthy, and I talk to my kids about that all the time, so I try to get them kind of on board with what I'm doing.
(21:08):
I completely have had to change around the way that I eat, not only just eating healthy, I actually always ate pretty healthy. It's just that after having the surgeries, I have a pretty limited diet, so I can't have dairy or gluten or raw vegetables or cold things or a whole bunch of other things. So I have to try to get creative and I've definitely come up with, I found some favorite things that my kids like that are healthy for them and healthy for me, so I make chocolate muffins with veggies in it, and that's one of the favorite things that my kids love when I make those. And I love them too because they're good for me. They don't have much sugar in them, and being that the vegetables are cooked, I'm able to eat them, so they have zucchini, carrots, and spinach in them, and we love making those together and we love sharing them.
(22:03):
I make sure that I'm active. I work out six days a week doing everything from weight training to Pilates to yoga, but I really kind of check in with my body and see how I'm feeling that day when I decide what I'm going to do. And I try to get my kids when they will to come out with me and do walks with me, take our dogs out for a walk, try to get the family involved in what we're doing as much as I can. I talk about doing my meditations and taking some time for myself and doing journaling with my kids a lot, and I think that the more that you can get your kids and make it fun, because being healthy can be really fun. Getting outside in nature and sharing that with our families can be a great way to help to stay on your wellness program as well.
(22:58):
Some of the great resources that I have found myself or that have been on the show I want to talk about, there's Dovetail Designs, which is a great app. It's helpful for families streamlining care. If you have multiple people that are going to appointments with the person that has cancer, it can help everyone to stay connected. We got this.org, which is a registry for cancer patients, and they have newly launched resources and recommendations. There's My Cancer Family, which is an incredible app where you can get recommendations and there's videos of people talking about how they were navigating cancer. The movie, hello, beautiful, that is just coming out by Christine Handy, was one of our guests. It's a really uplifting cancer story that has a happy ending, which is I think something that is so important to see. The American Cancer Society, we partnered on an episode.
(24:03):
They have incredible resources. There's transportation, they have support groups, there's financial aid, there are grants. There's a 24 hour hotline where you can just call and talk to a real person and they can help you to navigate all of the different options that they have. There is Cancer Support Community that has both online and in person resources. They're a national organization, and then they also have a Westchester branch that we had on. There's Cancer Support team that can send registered nurses to your house, some additional resources. The Bright Spot has some great resources on talking to your kids about cancer and other things. It's specifically for parents navigating cancer. There is the Life Strong Foundation talking about fertility preservation, resources, family support. There's Kids Connected, which is a support group in camp for kids that have a parent with Cancer.
(25:04):
Family Reach helps families with financial support during cancer treatment and cleaning for a reason. I think this is a great one because it's just impossible to keep your house clean when you're a cancer patient. Free cleaning services for cancer patients, and there are obviously so many more and we'll keep adding to this list. I hope you are able to take away some helpful tips from this story, and I'd love to hear from you if you have any thoughts on guests or topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the space between, you can email me at amri, which is AMRI at Amri Kibbler A-M-R-I-K-I-B-B-L-E-R.com, and you can find me on Instagram at amrikibbler. Thank you. Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of The Space Between. If this show brought you comfort or a sense of community, I'd love for you to subscribe and share it with anyone who might need it too. You can join the conversation on Instagram at The Space Between Cancer Family and head to amrikibbler.com for more resources designed to support parents navigating cancer. Just remember, you're never alone. This podcast is here as a companion on your journey towards healing, growth, and connection.